John’s mind was racing to arrive at an answer. With the analytical speed of a super genius, he went through the most likely outcomes and what he was willing to risk. ‘Normally I would completely trust Aclysia when it comes to a bake-off, but her opponent is the literal goddess of fast food. I don’t think an apple pie falls under that specification, but it’s best to assume that her cooking skills in general are top notch. More importantly, she doubtlessly knows her way around flavour enhancers, whereas Aclysia sticks to natural ingredients and generally healthy foods.’

Half a second had passed and the Gamer continued to think, too quickly for his familiars to follow or weigh in on the topic. All that was managed to be shared was the cautious enthusiasm of Aclysia. The weaponized maid felt that she had good odds at winning this, based on a well-founded pride in her cooking.

‘I wouldn’t bet the taxes or the army on anything lower than a 90% chance for victory.’ He went through the process of elimination to discern which one of the remaining conditions he wanted to wager today. ‘Where those two are too important to give on anything I’m not sure I will win, the prune cakes and the holiday are my ‘get out of jail free’ cards for those challenges I’m sure I will lose, so I shouldn’t waste them here either. That leaves me with the secession clause, the audience with Richard and the IBMAs.’

Of those three, John found the secession clause to be the least worrisome. There would be a natural way to leave the Federation anyway. It would be a whole lot harder than what the Florida guild demanded, but it would exist regardless. As such, this was better treated as another way to concede a competition without losing anything too important.

The IBMAs were something he wasn’t as keen on giving up. He still had promises pending to deliver one to DC and one to Boston, with the former being almost finished and the latter in the early stages of development. Pushing those off for another month or two, after the Hudson Brawl had put a delay on things previously, was going to rustle some feathers diplomatically that John preferred to be happy and groomed. It wouldn’t be a gargantuan loss, but some people would use it as an angle of attack and he should strive to avoid adding more of those to himself than necessary. This condition was best treated with caution.

In between those two nestled the audience with the Horned Rat. John had absolutely no idea what the Floridians wanted to talk about with Richard and that had him cautious. That aside, the Gamer didn’t know if he could guarantee any such meeting. Contact difficulties aside, the god of future calamities might just decide it was funny to screw John over by denying any such audience. Even worse, unlikely as it was, the Horned Rat might take it as some sort of insult that he was being used as a bargaining chip in such a situation. As much as the two of them clashed, the Gamer was much happier to have the god as an ally of sorts than an enemy of sorts.

Two seconds had passed and the Gamer arrived at a decision. ‘It shouldn’t be too bad if I lose and doesn’t net me any large benefits if I win either. Now, how to formulate my counter-demand…’ “In opposition to the condition that I will guarantee a meeting with the Horned Rat, Fusion presents the demand that I will try to arrange and attend a meeting with the Horned Rat.”

There were two specific things he achieved by putting things like that. Not only did he get himself out of the necessity to successfully arrange that meeting, he also got himself the right to attend if it happened. On a less tangible note, he hoped it would be positively received that he obliged the spirit of the original condition. As he could make whatever topical counter offer he wanted, presenting that he wouldn’t do anything at all was just as viable.

If he lost this challenge and the Florida guild were giant dicks about it, John would just point them to an ‘error’ in the original wording. They wanted to be guaranteed they could talk to the Horned Rat. On that front, pointing out that they all spoke English technically sufficed.

A transcript of his words appeared on the screen. First, as a sign of technical difficulties, in front of the ongoing livestream of Fred the Chicken, then inserted into the proper picture. ‘I’m starting to think these quirks are features, not bugs.’

“The bet is placed; you can begin when you want to!” Jeff announced.

Since two hours were ample time to bake an apple pie, neither party was particularly hurried to get started. John turned to Aclysia. “I’ll leave everything to you, then,” he said giving his weaponized maid a motivating kiss. He put all his love in the simple motion, embracing her while he enjoyed her lips. Before he could indulge himself too much and turn her on by a distracting amount, he let go.

“I will not disappoint, Master,” Aclysia promised, and the two separated, leaving her to enter the kitchen and scan the ingredients provided. John watched for some place to sit down, not feeling like spending the next two hours standing. After he made a request, a chair was flown in for him, allowing him to sit down next to his girlfriend, while Beatrice was comfortable standing next to them.

Wendy and Aclysia both spent the first ten minutes doing very similar things. They put into place their tools and the ingredients of their choice. John saw the many different kinds of flour, sugar, apples and salt that were around. Even water came in different variations. Each different choice would have an individual effect on the final taste.

Along with the base ingredients came a bunch of spices. Cinnamon, first of all, but also paprika powder, herbal mixtures, peppermint and a bunch of other things. There was no need to use any of it, just as there was no need to use any of the dozens of magical variations of each ingredient. Thankfully, Aclysia knew her way around the influence magic had on the tastes of things.

Although the things Aclysia made all looked quite mundane, what they ate was usually of remarkably good quality. That was to say, the Newman household’s monthly food budget was higher than most people’s annual salaries. Even though the weaponized maid could transform just about every combination of ingredients into edible food, the Gamer was not about to live below his standards. What was all that money and influence for if he didn’t use it to treat himself and his women, after all?

Even after the initial scouting stages, what they did was largely the same. Both prioritized making the pie crust first. Even John knew that made the most sense since it would have to settle in the refrigerator for a little while, once it was finished. This was also right about the point that he bowed out of having anything but a rough idea what was going on. When it came to cooking, he had only assisted on some occasions and never done more than follow instructions or make something as simple as throwing an egg in a pan.

What Aclysia and Wendy now engaged in had nothing to do with the simplicity of transforming raw bacon into crispy bacon. It didn’t help that, while the thing they worked on was the same, the approach looked so vastly different.

Aclysia was using table and teaspoons to measure things, adding them to bowls before mixing them together one after the other. She acted out a clear plan, an order in which things had to be joined to the pre-dough stuff. Occasionally, she would taste an ingredient with the tip of her fingers. Then she would shake her head or nod and add it to the slowly growing mixture in the machine. Different kinds of water were added at different stages.

Even though all of that was already far exceeding what was usually required to prepare dough, what was going on Wendy’s table was even more ludicrous.

Using test tubes, conical flasks, tiny scales and other chemical equipment, Wendy was exactly measuring every last one of her ingredients down to the milligram. Her kitchen looked more like a laboratory than a place where food was prepared, an image that was only reinforced once she started tossing certain things together into a wok and melting them. After all of the individual ingredients had combined, Wendy poured the unified mass onto a plate. It cooled quickly into a crystal carpet, which the redhead then hacked into shards, before finally adding them to the dough mixture.

John was watching the fight of a housemaid against the scientific precision of the fast food industry. Both had their merits and the Gamer, who had very much enjoyed both kinds of food at different stages in his life, had no idea who he would give the advantage in such a situation. Whoever won, it was unlikely to decide the war between those nourishment providing factions, if there even was a victory to be had over the stomach of mankind.

The crust was soon prepared. Wendy split hers into two parts, wrapped both in plastic foil, and threw them into the refrigerator. Following suit, Aclysia made four parts instead, each kept in a bowl.

John expected things to calm now. The dough would need to rest for a little while and continuing on with the next few steps immediately would only cause the cut apples to be exposed to the air for an unneeded amount of time. While Wendy confirmed those things for him, only cleaning up her workstation and getting everything in order for the next step, the white-haired maid immediately continued with something else.

“Am I allowed to use my own knife?” Aclysia asked Jeff, who had been overlooking and, occasionally, commenting on things.

“You can use your own equipment but not any new ingredients, yes,” Jeff responded.

“Peachy,” the weaponized maid hummed and summoned Salver. “Then, with Master’s love, I shall continue to prepare the greatest pie.” She held the knife for a few seconds like a cherished plushie, before using it to peel the apples. Of course, Salver had no inherent properties that would make things taste better, it was just a very sharp knife. A very sharp knife crossed with Aclysia’s blade skills equalled an artful display of apple peels coming off in continuous coils.

“That was pretty corny,” Rave giggled next to him. “Ya heard that? She’s gonna harness the power of love for the pie.”

“I mean, love isn’t an ingredient, but you tell me that that smile isn’t going to make it taste better.” With a simple gesture, John pointed at his weaponized maid. Adorably, she swung her hips and hummed to herself, while her smiling face portrayed the leisurely concentration that masters of their craft displayed when working.

“I could do that, but I’d be lying… I want that pie already…” Rave whined.

A third of the apples were soon de-cored and sliced into pieces. They didn’t last too long on the cutting board, as they soon landed in a pot, along with some brown sugar, lemon juice, some green-tinted water and a pinch of salt.

Just as Aclysia tended to her apple sauce in the making, Wendy went back into movement. She grabbed a bunch of magical ingredients and started measuring them in her test tubes. Using syringes, knives, spoons, brushes and other utensils, she layered some sort of mixture on top of a flat plate. John was extremely curious what it was, but Wendy, after working on it for fifteen minutes, only threw it into the fridge. Shortly thereafter, she started to cut her own apples. Her cutting skills were less honed, all around average really. John thought her only slightly better than himself. That made her apples look a fair bit worse, but wouldn’t have any influence on the taste.

Half an hour had passed since they had made the crusts and now both were preparing the apples for the pie. Wendy had started earlier and was also done much earlier when looking at the time total. Although Aclysia’s knife work was much better, the precision she used to take care of her remaining apples meant that she was slower. Every slice had to be exactly as large as the next one. She had carefully picked her apples to be of similar sizes to allow this to work.

“Look at that, the maid Aclysia is using three different kinds of apples, what could she be planning?!” Jeff hyped that fact up like it was the reveal of a new album from the Beatles, the news including the necromancy needed for that task. Regardless of his overenthusiastic tone, it was true. Aclysia had used one kind of apple for the sauce and was currently slicing the other two.

Wendy retrieved the spice layered plate from the refrigerator and put her apples on top. Once an adequate amount of the fruit slices were in position, she grabbed the edge of that layer and pulled. It stretched like chewing gum and the redhead folded it above the apples until they were bagged up like some sort of translucent dumpling. Wendy threw the plate into the refrigerator again and then made a second one just like it.

Having cut her apples to a satisfying degree, Aclysia finished her apple sauce by smashing it down into a very fine mesh. The dark yellow liquid was left to the side to cool a little bit while Aclysia retrieved two of the four bowls with pie dough she had prepared. Rolling them out into equally sized circles, the weaponized maid covered both of them in some syrupy liquid and then laid them into the oven.

From there on out, about an hour and ten minutes since the start of the contest, things went pretty quickly on both fronts. Both retrieved their crust dough from the refrigerator and did their work. Wendy did a whole lot more kneading than Aclysia, but both used one-part dough to fill out the pie plate and the other to make the lid. In between those steps were some more differences though.

Wendy tossed the earlier prepared bag of apples in there, put some more apple slices on top and then peeled the extra layer of that chewing gum-esque stuff off the plate and carefully placed it between the apples and the lid. The way she made it was in that often-seen criss-cross pattern, achieved by weaving strips of the dough together, the apples underneath peeking out through the gaps.

Aclysia carefully layered the apple slices at the bottom of her pie. Due to their thinness they barely took up any space, even though Aclysia put them densely packed and in three perfectly circular layers of rings. Once she had achieved the lowest layer, she retrieved the two circles of dough that had already been baking for a little while. Their surfaces looked glazed, caramelized, and Aclysia quickly placed one above the apples. After sealing whatever tiny gaps were between the crust of the pie and that layer, she applied some more glaze to the surrounding area and poured in the apple sauce.

Once the liquid had settled, she put the second layer in and ensured it was sealed in the same fashion. From there, she only had to repeat what she had done for the lowest layer with another kind of apple and seal it all up with the lid, formed from the last batch of dough. Whatever she had remaining in terms of apple slices and glaze, she used to decorate the top. Once she was out of materials, she gave her unbaked work a final inspection. Then she nodded.